Series Title: Dog of the Afterworld
Book 1 – Dog of the Afterworld (Birchbark Press, 2017)
Book 2 – Saltwood (Meadowlark, 2025)
A former Russian assassin using the alias Nick Deveraux has become a mysterious American hero but is kept under wraps following his spectacular capture. The FBI releases him after two years, right into the hands of the Russian mob. He is coerced to complete his former assignment — kill the Senate’s last moderate conservative, Harriet Gayfeather of Kansas. He finds himself caught between the twin grindstones of oil money and religious power and becomes oddly aligned with both the senator’s deputy and a woman who has made herself regionally famous by promising to kill an unidentified person in Kansas.
Praise for Saltwood
"I love Leon Unruh's SALTWOOD for the same reason I love his previous, related novel DOG OF THE AFTERWORLD: In terms of craft, he delivers everything you want from a thriller. I dare you not to be fully invested from the very first page in who these people are and where things are headed. But then Unruh, a longtime journalist, brings art and a sophisticated understanding of the world to the proceedings. There's nothing cookie-cutter about this novel. It's a deep, absorbing, kinetic read, featuring a main character—a former Russian assassin now named Nick Devereaux—trying to navigate American culture. It's hard for Nick. It's hard for all of us. And yet, this journey satisfies."
—Craig Lancaster, two-time High Plains Book Award winner
"Nick Deveraux, aka Nikolai Fyodorov, is a dichotomy, a Russian/American assassin with scruples. His target is a United States senator from Kansas, and his orders are: kill or be killed. He becomes the senator’s bodyguard instead. But an explosion at an oil rig leads Nick to question the morals and motives of a cast of characters, including the senator and himself. Unruh’s tale of suspense keeps the reader guessing. Who’s the villain? Who’s the victim?"
—Michael D. Graves, author of Human Shadow, a Pete Stone mystery
Book 1 – Dog of the Afterworld (Birchbark Press, 2017)
Book 2 – Saltwood (Meadowlark, 2025)
A former Russian assassin using the alias Nick Deveraux has become a mysterious American hero but is kept under wraps following his spectacular capture. The FBI releases him after two years, right into the hands of the Russian mob. He is coerced to complete his former assignment — kill the Senate’s last moderate conservative, Harriet Gayfeather of Kansas. He finds himself caught between the twin grindstones of oil money and religious power and becomes oddly aligned with both the senator’s deputy and a woman who has made herself regionally famous by promising to kill an unidentified person in Kansas.
Praise for Saltwood
"I love Leon Unruh's SALTWOOD for the same reason I love his previous, related novel DOG OF THE AFTERWORLD: In terms of craft, he delivers everything you want from a thriller. I dare you not to be fully invested from the very first page in who these people are and where things are headed. But then Unruh, a longtime journalist, brings art and a sophisticated understanding of the world to the proceedings. There's nothing cookie-cutter about this novel. It's a deep, absorbing, kinetic read, featuring a main character—a former Russian assassin now named Nick Devereaux—trying to navigate American culture. It's hard for Nick. It's hard for all of us. And yet, this journey satisfies."
—Craig Lancaster, two-time High Plains Book Award winner
"Nick Deveraux, aka Nikolai Fyodorov, is a dichotomy, a Russian/American assassin with scruples. His target is a United States senator from Kansas, and his orders are: kill or be killed. He becomes the senator’s bodyguard instead. But an explosion at an oil rig leads Nick to question the morals and motives of a cast of characters, including the senator and himself. Unruh’s tale of suspense keeps the reader guessing. Who’s the villain? Who’s the victim?"
—Michael D. Graves, author of Human Shadow, a Pete Stone mystery
Native Kansan Leon Unruh is the author of the Dog of the Afterworld series. He wrote for several small newspapers in Kansas and went on to work as an editor at dailies in Austin and Dallas, Texas; Wichita, Kansas; and Anchorage, Alaska. He was later the editor at the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
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